Afraid to fundraise? You’re not alone. In teaching Biblical fundraising around the world, I find that the obstacle of fear ranks first in every culture, in every organization. Here is a surprising story about how God used Funding Your Ministry in the life of a fearful missionary and the organization that sent her.

The overwhelmingly standard evangelical response to sexual brokenness has been to address it through the lens of “lust management,” even declaring war against it. This approach has oversimplified and trivialized a far more complex issue within human sexuality.

In some small-group discussions, people like to leap into discussing what a passage of the Bible or a chapter of a book means to them personally without examining what it says. Such discussions can quickly lose sight of the topic or passage you’re studying.

How do you get participants to share their stories? Ask storytelling questions. Who was God to you when you were a child? What has been one of the best compliments you have received as an adult? What does Easter mean to you personally?

The only time Jesus told us to “wait around” was when he said to wait for the Holy Spirit to empower us. That’s excellent advice. We shouldn’t be trying to do this alone, because only God can make the complexity of spiritual reality truly clear to someone.

Pain resonates deeply. Any movement that successfully reduces suffering becomes immediately relevant. With the behaviors of men at the center of so much suffering, a movement of men who are dangerous with goodness is both the sign of the Kingdom and the answer to injustice.

Mark wastes no time in getting down to business—a single-sentence introduction, and not a digression to be found from beginning to end. An event has taken place that radically changes the way we look at and experience the world, and he can’t wait to tell us about it.

Mary Magdalene woke up early Sunday morning and made her way to the tomb. Finding it empty, she asked the angels what they had done with Jesus. Turning around with tears in her eyes, she mistook Jesus for the gardener, but as soon as he called her by name, she recognized him.

The Christian gospel is expansive by nature—it spreads out. It’s what you would expect: The God who created a vast universe acts in such a way that his redemptive help will reach into every nook and cranny of creation.

For Isaiah, words are watercolors and melodies and chisels to make truth and beauty and goodness. Or, as the case may be, hammers and swords and scalpels to unmake sin and guilt and rebellion. Isaiah does not merely convey information.